Gendering a Sacred Nature: Between Essentialism and Queer; Insights from a Study on Eco-Spiritual Activism in Switzerland

Among eco-spiritual activists in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, gendered notions such as “Mother Earth” or gendered “nature spirits” are ubiquitous. Drawing on an in-depth ethnographic study of this milieu (2015–2020), this article presents some of the ways in which these activists articulate gender issues with reference to nature. The authors discuss the centrality of the notion of the self and ask what outputs emerge from linking environmental with spiritual action. We demonstrate that activists in three milieus—the New Age and holistic milieu, the transition network, and neo-shamanism—handle this link differently and thereby give birth to a variety of emic perspectives upon the nature/culture divide, as well as upon gender—ranging from essentialist and organicist views to queer approaches. The authors also present more recent observations on the increasing visibility of women and feminists as key public speakers. They conclude with the importance of contextualizing imaginaries that circulate as universalistic and planetary and of relating them to individuals’ gendered selves and their social, political, and economic capital.

Municipal Solid Waste Management: the interdependence between communication and selective collection

Considering the role of communication for the effectiveness of selective waste collection programs (SCP), the research aimed to analyze the communication process used among the actors involved in waste SCP. In order to achieve the objective, a county located in the interior of the state of São Paulo, Brazil, was used as the case study. In the research, diagrams of information transmission were created, based on the Shannon Weaver model and adapted by DeFleur, so that communication gaps in the explored SCP and possibilities for improvement were identified. Among the results obtained in the study, it was observed that there is a distance between population and the cooperative that impairs the interactivity between these actors; the current information is insufficient to reinforce behavior in the population, since they don’t take into account environmental, social and economic factors as a form of mobilization; and the most effective means of communication to the public (speakers on the trucks) is no longer used to publicize the program. Thus, the communication in the analyzed SCP still lacks improvements, since the study identified noises in the communication that lead to failures in the selective collection of the county in question.

Computer-assisted prosody training: Improving public speakers' vocal charisma with the Web-Pitcher

Computer-assisted prosody training (CAPT) has so far mainly been used to teach foreign languages, although prosody is still hardly taken into account in language leraning. Conversely, prosody receives a lot of attention in studies and activities related to public-speaker training. But, despite that, CAPT tools are practically unknown in this type of training. The present paper addresses this gap and introduces the “Web Pitcher”, a new browser-based version of the feedback and evaluation software “Pitcher” that was developed in 2018 for the prosody-oriented training of charisma – a key characteristic of successful public speakers, which is defined as signaling competence, self-confidence and passion. In an online experiment with 60 test users it is investigated here whether and to what extent the Web Pitcher positively influences the prosodic charisma triggers of its users, and which feedback modes in which order lead to the greatest learning success. An acoustic analysis of before- vs. after-training speeches given by the 60 test users shows that the Web Pitcher improves six key prosodic charisma triggers of its learners by an average of 53 % after one hour of training – and thus performs at eye level with its offline precursor, the Pitcher. With the correct combination of its two feedback modes, the Web Pitcher even outperforms its offline precursor in terms of user improvement. The results are discussed with a view to further R&D steps and the integration of the Web Pitcher in real coaching activities. In this context, the paper also contains a link through which researchers can register and use the Web Pitcher for their own scientific purposes, also beyond questions of public-speaker or charisma training.

When saying the wrong thing doesn't really matter

Each "Communication Corner" essay is self-contained; however, they build on each other. For best results, before reading this essay and doing the exercise, go to the first essay "How an Ugly Duckling Became a Swan," then read each succeeding essay. Getting one's tongue tangled is an ever-present fear for most public speakers. But it shouldn't be. Occasionally saying the wrong thing seldom does any serious damage, or any damage at all, to the effectiveness of a presentation. Here's why.

The Use of Idioms and Wordplay in The Big Bang Theory Sitcom

Language is a powerful communication tool. A skilful person uses words and manipulates them for different purposes; be that for persuading clients in buying different products or joining a congregation; soothing aggravated patients and consoling people who lost their loved ones. Language is used for teaching, informing, entertaining and making people laugh. Many public speakers, teachers, politicians and leaders use humour for breaking the ice and engaging the audience into listening. Moreover, nowadays a vast number of sitcoms are popular among different age groups based on the topics, genre and the audience’s field of interest. One such series which has caught the interest of a broader audience on Netflix is The Big Bang Theory. The usage of idioms, wordplays, puns, rhyming structures, pop culture language and scientific jargon, permeated with humour, are widely spread into the characters’ daily conversations through entire episodes. From the linguistic point of view, the corpus of The Big Bang Theory episodes will be thoroughly analysed for finding the relevance of using idioms, wordplays, puns and other structures in transmitting humorous messages to the audience.

Glossophobic Experience Amongst MPSPC Philippines Pre-service Teachers Through Oral Speech Presentations

Most individuals are not born to be public speakers; they are educated to be developed as one. When they are in front of an audience being the focus of attention, they experience emotions leading to nausea and excessive sweating because of fear and anxiety. Individuals who have a fear of speaking in public suffer from strong fear in social performance situations and social spheres, which is known as glossophobia. This research aims to discover the different factors that cause speaking anxiety among the pre-service teachers of Mountain Province State Polytechnic College - Teacher Education Department (MPSPC-TED) in Philippines and to suggest strategies that could help prevent them from having glossophobia problem. Samples of interview output, coding, and careful analysis and interpretation of the gathered data from the selected 50 undergraduate students who had research oral presentations, oral lesson demonstrations, and oral speaking presentations have been transcribed and found out major themes that cause glossophobia problems, i.e., linguistic obstacles, audience’s manifestation, mastery of the topic and particular motives. Knowing what causes these problems, this study proposed the DISRUPT strategy to reduce students’ public speaking anxiety effectively.

Mechanisms of External Public Spectacle

What others think matters for internal deliberation. Perceptions of public opinion—of the distribution of opinions across the entire community—are important for the same reason. Informal networked deliberation can give citizens only a partial view of the support any opinion or claim enjoys community-wide. This chapter discusses one important deliberative contribution mass media can make to citizens’ internal deliberations: providing information about the incidence of opinion and stakes in society at large. I discuss different ways in which the media can more accurately convey frequency information through its design of public spectacles. The selection of arguments and opinions they feature, how they feature them, as well as the selection of public speakers to voice them, all matter in this respect.

Social Roles of the Clergy

Changes in two communities studied in the 1950s and 1960s by W. M. Williams (Northlew in Devon and Gosforth in Cumbria) form the springboard for reflections on the social roles of the clergy in a largely secular society. That the clergy are often called on to act as community spokespersons and honest brokers is not, as is sometimes argued, a reflection of the enduring popularity of religion. It is precisely because most people are not religious that the clergy can be seen as disinterested and valued for their organizational skills and their experience as public speakers.

Women’s Voices?

This chapter suggests that Christian public speakers (like other trained rhetors) saw a certain risky theatricality around using prosōpopoeia, especially for women. By comparing works on similar themes, one can see how Christians experiment with and adapt prosōpopoeia to various ends, and also how they mitigate its potentially inappropriateness in various ways: women ‘become male’ when they speak; authors stress the effect of their words, rather than reporting them; authors state what women did not say, rather than what they did (counterfactual prosōpopoeia). This chapter studies homilies on the so-called Maccabean martyrs, the forty martyrs of Sebaste, and some examples of philosophical women speaking in private.